Annex D - Comparability to Other Government Sources of Rental
Data

ONS Index
of Private Housing Rental Prices

The
ONS Index
of Private Housing Rental Prices (
IPHRP)
[10] is a quarterly experimental price index. It tracks the prices
paid for renting property from private landlords in Great Britain,
including an index at a Scotland level.
ONS have
recently improved the methodology underlying the rent price
indices.

Whilst the
ONS Index
uses same raw data as the Rent Service Scotland 'Market Evidence
Database', there are some important differences to how the data are
processed and used:

The
ONS
Index uses the rental data to create a
matched-sample dataset to ensure that only
like-for-like properties are compared over time.

The
ONS
matched-sample dataset retains rental records for a period of
time (an assumption based on average tenancy length), and it is
therefore an attempt to measure
rental price changes for all rents and not just a measure
of recent rental market evidence.

The
ONS
Index is mix-adjusted in that it uses
expenditure weights to adjust to the overall
distribution of types of properties in the rental market (by
expenditure).

The Index
does not provide any information on actual rental
levels, and the Index values provided are
not available at a sub-Scotland basis.

Full details of the methodology used to calculate the
IPHRP can
be found in the
June
2013 IPHRP article. This article can also be supplemented by
the
January
2015 article fully explaining the revised price collection
methods for
IPHRP.

Rent Service Scotland 30
th Percentile Rent Figures

Annual information on the
30th percentile of weekly private sector rents by
bedroom size is published on the Scottish Government website
[11], alongside corresponding information on Local Housing
Allowance (
LHA) Rates.

There may be a small number of minor differences in the data
that was used for previous 30
th percentile calculations compared with the data used
for this publication because the Market Evidence Database is a live
database and therefore over time there may be some records that are
updated to reflect that more up-to-date information becomes
available, or where additional statistical quality assurance has
been carried out.

The 30
th percentile rents are also presented as weekly rents,
rather than the calendar month figures presented in this
statistical publication. Monthly rents are seen as a more user
friendly way of presenting the data in this publication given that
private rents are typically paid in periods of calendar months.

Private Rental Market Statistics for England

The Valuation Office Agency (
VOA) publish
Private Rental Market Statistics for England
[12], which is published twice-yearly. Whilst it presents similar
looking statistics to this publication, there are some differences
which may affect any comparisons. In particular, rent for 1 bedroom
shared properties is presented as
gross rather than net of any shared services, and
also properties with 5 or more bedrooms are
included, not excluded. These differences may
impact on any comparisons when looking at average rents for these
types of properties.